


songs that will linger forever

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Knights - Freeform, Love Stories, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Missing Scene, Oaths & Vows, Post - A Feast for Crows, Post - A Storm of Swords, Post-Stoneheart, oathkeepers fanzine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 00:10:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21145529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: Twenty-five years after he kills Aerys Targaryen, Jaime Lannister has heard so many songs about himself and Brienne that he has lost count of them. He’s smiled at hearing all of them, for bad and for good.





	songs that will linger forever

**Author's Note:**

> AAAND HELLO AGAIN, it's my great pleasure to share my contribution for the Oathkeepers fanzine which is finally available [here](https://oathkeepersfanzine.tumblr.com/post/188506660548/its-with-the-utmost-pleasure-that-i-can-finally) and which has some incredible contributions by everyone who participated so please check it out for quality jb content <3 also, I'm still 100% shocked that I actually managed to write a story that made sense and wasn't just one long scene in 2k because what is synthesis certainly not my friend, but apparently I did so have some musings about those two's issues with knighthood and related songs/stories, I had fun with it and I hope you do as well ;)
> 
> Also, as usual: nothing is mine, I wish grrm is of my opinion when it comes to these two, the title is from Bob Dylan and I'll saunter back downwards again now ;) and go check out the zine!

_Once upon a time, a five-and-ten year old boy named Jaime Lannister donned a white cloak, not long after having helped defeat a bandit known as the Smiling Knight. When taking that oath, he had thought that it was just the beginning, that his name would be sung by minstrels and that stories about his knightly deeds would be told throughout Westeros._

_Five years later, that same boy killed his king and resolutely stopped entertaining any such stupid notion. His name _would_ go down in history, sure enough, but not for knightly deeds or for quests he’d take part in. After all, maybe it was just as well — by then, he had had enough proof that real life doesn’t work like chivalry stories._

_On that, he turns out to be quite wrong._

—

Of course, stories and songs are hardly a faithful rendition of reality. Jaime Lannister’s name, turns out, stops being entwined with Aerys Targaryen’s, as far they are concerned. Actually, it starts getting attached to more than one story. Some of them are actually quite close to the truth. Others are mostly wrong.

In all of them, though, he’s never alone.

—

_There’s more than one account of how Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth met. They somehow differ, but all agree on a few basic facts. She was supposed to escort him to King’s Landing, they were captured by bandits, he lost his hand and she was such a model of strength after their capture that he didn’t let himself die just because it would have been quite unflattering if he hadn’t stood up to it._

_This account is the kind that isn’t entirely wrong, but at the same time, it’s hardly faithful reality, either._

—

“That somehow doesn’t look like a very dangerous man to me,” some Bloody Mummer says somewhere near 

(but it sounds far as well)

and Jaime can’t even disagree with him. His entire mouth tastes like vomit, his clothes reek of it, he still smells rotten flesh even if his right hand is no longer hanging from his neck and while he’s trying to take the wench’s advice, he _really_ is, he can barely keep his eyes open let alone eat. He tried - he vomited it all not long later.

Hells, they haven’t even tied him up, and in his failure to stay upright he’s ended up with his head on Brienne’s shoulder. At least she hasn’t shrugged him off.

Considering that she had been the one cleaning what she could from him, he’d feel more humiliated, if only he had the presence of mind for it.

“I thought that out of everyone _you_ would not apologize for something that’s hardly your fault,” the wench whispers a moment later.

Damn, did he talk out loud?

“I am pretty sure neither you nor Lady Stark thought _this _would mean _escorting me back to King’s Landing_,” he croaks, hoping no one hears him.

“That’s no matter. I didn’t do it for amusement,” she replies a moment later. “And your treatment goes against everything honorable men stand for.”

Then she moves just slightly, not jostling him too much — good, because he’s not sure he can take moving abruptly — bringing her bound hands upwards. Right. They didn’t tie her to the tree — they figured her out as well, they know she won’t escape without her charge. When she puts both hands around the rag covering his stump, not too strongly, he has to bite his tongue not to make some undignified noise. She’s being extremely gentle, and her hands feel like a swordsman’s should, and until he passes out on her shoulder, everything feels slightly less bad.

—

_One story that is entirely wrong is that their supposed affair started long before reaching King’s Landing, after slaying a bear in Harrenhal._

_Slaying the bear is the only part of that story that is true. It did not go quite like that._

_—_

_“_What you did in the pit,” Brienne says softly a few days later, “that was worthy of songs.”

“Hardly,” Jaime answers brusquely. He doesn’t really need a reminder of things he used to wish for that he can’t have anymore and that he never could have in the first place.

“I beg to disagree, ser.”

“Wench, it never quite goes like that. In songs there is a helpless beautiful maiden and a strong knight who defies a foe just based on his strength, and then she kisses him and there is nothing wrong with the world. You might be a maiden but you’re hardly helpless, I hardly did anything in the first place, and there is still plenty wrong with the world. I fail to see what’s _worthy of songs_.”

“Perhaps you’re not entirely wrong,” she replies, but then she visibly swallows and looks at him as if she’s _really_ hoping he won’t make fun of her.

His breath catches in his throat when she moves forward and kisses his cheek, for a single moment, her lips brushing against his beard like a feather’s touch, and then she moves back with her own cheeks so red they look like they just caught fire. Anyone would say that there’s nothing lovely in that sight — her face isn’t made for blushing prettily — but as it is, he couldn’t find an unkind word for her if he tried.

“My thanks,” he finally says. It’s obvious from the way she’s looking at him that she’s relieved that his response wasn’t different.

So, this is the first time a maiden kisses him in thanks because of his knightly deeds.

He’s surprised himself as he thinks, _I think I will take it_.

—

_One story that is halfway wrong and halfway right says that he gave her a priceless Valyrian sword to fulfill their vow and that she almost betrayed him with it but eventually came through and he forgave her for it. It has a lot of variations. Maybe some get it more right than others. None of them get it wholly._

—

“I need to apologize to you,” she tells him a couple days after fleeing Lady Stoneheart.

“You already did,” Jaime sighs, “and I already forgave you.” How could he not, when she slew her with tears in her eyes, the way he slew _Aerys_ once upon a time?

“Not for that,” she says. “I presumed to know better than you about — all of this.” She takes a deep breath. “I thought you were an oathbreaker without morals. I just killed my own former liege lady and broke most of my vows at once. I had no right to judge you, and I did it for entirely less noble reasons.”

Jaime would like to tell her that she would have realized it at some point, she was bound to, everyone in their line of duty does if they _care_ for it, but instead he sticks to one specific thing she said.

“… Less noble reasons than _me_?”

She snorts, and it doesn’t sound much like her. She sounds like _he_ used to.

He’s not so sure he likes it.

“Ser, you saved an entire city. She asked me to kill _you_ and the only reason I didn’t let her hang me instead was that I didn’t want Pod and Hyle to die for my mistakes. I don’t know how noble a reason that is, in comparison.”

He reaches for her wrist.

“I don’t know,” he says, “if the problem is that you were going to do it for someone such as me —”

“Ser,” she interrupts him, “_the problem_ is that it was an extremely selfish reason. Your life would have been worth it regardless.”

He hadn’t thought anyone in Westeros would have been willing to die for him, not at all, but now she’s saying the _she_ _would have _—

“Don’t,” he says, the words getting stuck in his throat. He could tell her she should hang on to those morals of hers, that she just learned a lesson but she doesn’t have to become like him —

But he can’t, so he moves forward and kisses her instead, and he hadn’t known he was hoping for her to kiss him back, but when she does —

When she _does_, it seems so obvious, he doesn’t know how he hadn’t figured it out a long time ago.

He reaches up, touching her scarred cheek. His voice drops to a whisper. “What will you do now?"

She shrugs. “I had another lead for Lady Sansa in the Vale. I will follow it.”

“Still?”

She smiles thinly. “I swore a vow to the _both_ of you. I _will_.”

Of course she would, he thinks. He thinks about his options, but then shakes his head and decides to go with his gut. After all, he did take his decision the instant he followed her out of his tent, didn’t he?

“All right,” he says, “but I’m coming with you.”

Her eyes widen. “Ser — you can’t, you have an army, I shouldn’t have —”

“I’ve wanted to go with _you_ since the moment I let you go,” he admits. “My sister asked for help with her trial and I burned her letter. I don’t care for Riverrun. I hadn’t even wanted to go in the first place. And the one thing I’ve always wanted was to go on quests, when I was — like you. I’m coming with,” he says, sure, knowing that it’s one of the few things he’s done in his life that he _wanted_ to. A few tears slip from her eyes.

“I could not be happier,” she says. “Ser —”

“How about you just call me Jaime instead?” He replies, and kisses her again before she can say otherwise.

She kisses back, her hand grasping at his hair.

—

_There are enough songs about how they laid together that it’s nigh impossible to count them. Most are exaggerated, some are a retelling of _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_, some say they started long before they did, some say they started long after they actually did. All of them do agree on something, though._

—

The North is cold and the air is freezing and Jaime has always known he wasn’t made for it.

But —

That doesn’t matter, not when he has a room in Winterfell that’s always warm at any given time and when he has a bed he can call _his_ that’s even warmer than the room itself, not when Brienne is straddling his hips and riding him slowly, her hands clutching at his hair but without pulling, his own left hand pulling her down for a kiss, her eyes so blue in the candlelight, not when she holds him up gently as she moves an arm behind his shoulders, not when her skin is warm and scarred under his mouth, not when her lips are dropping kisses all over the crown of his head as she fucks herself on him. He moans against her neck, throwing his right arm around her waist, dragging her _closer_, thinking that not long ago he had woken up screaming from a dream in which Cersei had turned into Aerys and had _him_ burned before he could kill her, and it had taken Brienne a look to _know_ and draw him closer, and she feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to him —

He _could _sing endless songs about her, about _this_, about what they have, but he’s sure none would give her justice.

—

_Twenty-five years after he kills Aerys Targaryen, Jaime Lannister has heard so many songs about himself and Brienne that he has lost count of them._

_He’s smiled at hearing all of them, for bad and for good._

_None of them are quite truthful, not really._

_But that’s fine. After all, Brienne is right out of the ones he used to wish he could be in when he knelt for Ser Arthur the first time. He’s only too glad to know that when he goes down in history in those same songs, it’s going to be with her._

End.


End file.
